Imagine a hard day at work is done, the fridge is full of beer, and you have a commitment free night ready for the taking … too bad all you have from Netflix are art films and documentaries. It seemed like a good idea at the time, a documentary about documentaries. If only you knew what your mood would be by the time the movies actually got to your doorstep.

Well, now you can. Part psychotherapy, part online scheduling, part new age luck, the Netflix mood ring actually predicts what your mood will be before and after watching movies in your queue. Adam Sandler movies have a right time and a right place - but only if you plan ahead.

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Posted: May 15th, 2008 under control, futureNow.
Comments: 3

My friend David (to protect his identity, let’s just call him David Beck) doesn’t seem to feel satisfied by a Snickers bar. So he usually chases it down it with a Coke and handful or so of Sugar Babies. Which is all fine and good - but why the extra step? When I want soda I don’t want to wait to put down the candy and lift up a whole other can - I want it now!  And when there’s a will . . . imagine edible candy tubes inside your favorite bar, keeping your soda fresh, effervescent, and ready for that cola Niagara rush, where sugary fluids navigate the cheapest chocolate, caramel and nougat in a simple return to Eden.

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Posted: April 16th, 2008 under control, food.
Comments: none

Jukeboxes are great. Great, if you like libraries and socialized medicine. So… what I want is a jukebox that only plays the music *I* like. How? By paying more. Hear a song you don’t like it, outbid it. I mean, what do you want more: That fiver in your pocket, or that Vanilla Ice song haunting your waking moments for the rest of the evening?

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Posted: February 21st, 2008 under control, money, public spaces.
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It’s 2008, what’s your New Year’s resolution? Actually, what was yours last year? What about the year before? Do they relate? Have you made any progress? What have you learned from the experience? Well, we all want to lose weight, but what we really want is for Web 2.0 to save us from having to think too much. and that where My Resolutions comes into play. Welcome in 2008 with all the Tufte visualization goodness to keep off those unwanted 15 pounds and see how it’s inner-connected to staying up too late, not brushing your teeth enough and wanting to connect more with friends.

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Posted: January 1st, 2008 under control, futureNow, holiday.
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Have you ever peed on the floor and said “I wish I could save the world?” How about “I wish this would clean itself up all by itself?”Well, now both are possible, with the Peelectric Bath Mat. It works likes this: A highly conductive film lines the bathroom floor around the toilet. Renegade urine collects on the film and its electrostatic potential is converted to energy. How? (Wow, I just proposed a clean source of energy and you no longer have to clean the bathroom floor and you ask me how?) The triboelectric effect is a type of contact electrification in which certain materials become electrically charged when coming into contact with another. Happy? It’s all summed up in the simple formula, P=mc².Once you have the electricity you can fold the energy back into your own home’s power grid. Alternately, set the Peelectric on “penalty mode” if you’re tired of people peeing on the floor. In penalty mode, the film is electrified to send a small reminder shock to Mr. Leaky.It’s Peelectric! Boogie Woogie Woogie!

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Posted: October 14th, 2007 under almost green, control.
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Have you noticed that any modern electronic device that has a remote control is useless without that remote control? If you haven’t noticed that, you probably don’t have kids that hide the aforementioned remote control. So talking about this dilemma with another parent the idea came up, what if your T.V. or stereo had a paging button built in ( just like your cordless phone)? But let’s take it a step further, let’s just get rid of the remote and have your smart electronic device react to you and your preferences, just by you being in the room.

How does this happen, the wave of the future: Biometric Ass Recognition — sure there’s already fingerprint and iris scans but were talking about what shows you like T.V. not online banking. You sit, your ass is analyzed, your identity confirmed and with a few simple scans for temperature, spectrometric gas analysis and seat sweat pH, your home entertainment system knows who you are, what mood your in and whether you’re ready for Herbie the Love Bug or a marathon session of Law and Order.

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Posted: September 27th, 2007 under control, futureNow, gear, time saver.
Comments: 1

Sometimes when I lay my head down on the pillow at night, I feel like I’m in an old-time Kate Hepburn movie where she holds a glass up against a wall to listen to what’s going on next door.  Only.. I really don’t want to listen in on the neighbors’ late-night conversation or the car playing music outside.  It seems that the vibrations in the floor or walls are being transmitted directly through the structure of the building, up into the bed, through the depths of the pillow and into my poor ear that only wants to keep dreaming.

Why not make a sound-isolating pillow?  A pillow made of some really cool, decoupling foam.  I see it as a lot of little chunky foam squares.  Maybe also the pillow emits some white noise of its own too, like a seashell.

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Posted: September 18th, 2007 under control, futureNow, sound.
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There are many ways to deny flatulence (”not me! it was… the dog, your kids, a gaseous oder from that strange factory”). Or some people try to go for an oscar and act their way out of it: a blank stare into space, a mean glare at a coworker, an intense monologue (”Alan Greenspan did wear a dress but never to congressional hearings… but his underwear choices…”).

Well, there are probably a dozen ways to stop farting (see other posts to come this Fall), but if you want to break wind and just not get blamed, then what you need is a stuffed animal to blame it on. Now I know what you’re going to say, stuffed animals don’t fart. But they could, I mean if you can get a doll that pees, why not a doll that farts? (They could come with various scents to match the pretend meals that you give them). And once your stuffed animal farts, there’s just one more player at the table to take the blame! Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey, who farts all the time.

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Posted: September 18th, 2007 under control, public spaces, sound.
Comments: 1

I seem to get a slight thrill of letting the gas gauge go down to “E” but if I had my way I would carry extra fuel in my car in a heartbeat ( and when I mean “my way”, I mean no danger of combusting into a extra large fireball, passing out from gas fumes wafting up from cheap plastic containers and using up all my trunk space with gallons upon gallons of liquid.) So veggie fuel almost makes this dream come true but what I really want is concentrated fuel cubes (kinda like Jell-O shots for your car.) Small, potent and fast acting.

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Posted: September 12th, 2007 under almost green, control, futureNow.
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E-commerce is all speed– getting you your product fast and taking your money faster. What if there was an online service that would give you some of the immediate consumer therapy of making a purchase but actually held yor money for a self imposed period of days before it actually made the purchase? It would work like this, you still get to shop at the store of your choice, you get to use your credit card and the store responds as if your just a regular shopper.Behind the sceens the whole process is managed by the online financial proxy and payement and of course shipment of the goods is held until say 5 days later. You then get an email from the online escrow service asking if you still want to go through with purchase and if you do it releases the money to the vendor. If not, no harm no foul. The online escrow could give you a chance to cool your heels a bit before realizing that there is no shortage of flat screeen t.v.’s in the world or countless other online “deals”.

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Posted: August 31st, 2007 under consumer therapy, control, money.
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